Hatred for Ethanol

[Nyogtha]

Originally Posted by jhellwig
Originally Posted by Nyogtha
It would typically be anhydrous 99% purity monimum before adding debaturant, which is typically natural gasoline (condensate, "drip", white lightning of the gasoline world) for ethanol destined for gasoline blending. However I'm unaware of snt ethanol tank, barge, railcar, truck trailer, etc. gas blanketing for ethanol used in gasoline nlending, same as for gasoline itself whether blended with ethanol or not.

There have been papets on using ethanol purified simply by distillayion used in gasoline blending, but they miss the main negative issues such as phase seperation from what I saw.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fieldt...ydrous-ethanol-in-gasoline-blending/amp/

The ethers used in gasoline blending are not anhydrous but aren't subject to phase seperation, such as MTBE, ETBE, & TAME.

It is more pure than 99%. I don't remember the numbers from when I worked on instrumentation in an ethanol plant but I think before the mol sieves it was over 95% and after was way higher than 99%. The final product proof meter I think only had a .3% span on it. It is stored in tanks with floating roof in plants and larger terminals so there is almost no air contact on it.

There is a spec out there on what percentage the denatureant has to be but I think it might be below 1%


Did you read the either my post or the linked paper in my prior post? Minimum 99% is just that, the minimum.

RIN's are a HUGE driver in ethanol blending, well eclipsing replacement for MTBE in air quality non-attainment areas. This is what drives some refiners to stop blending conventional 87 (R+M)/2 regular unleaded gasolime, and drives a LOT of the differential price between conventional 87 (R+M)/2 gasoline.

It's been 6 years since I retired and the RIN drivers only increase under the RFS. I live in the 7th largest city in the US and the only such major metropolitan area not yet declared an air quality non-attainment area. No vapor collection systems on retail gas pumos here yet. But E10 is everywhere, conventional regular unleaded gasoline is difficult to find and pricey relative to E10 regular due to RINs, not refinery blending capability.

 

[Nyogtha]

Originally Posted by jhellwig
Originally Posted by Garak
Originally Posted by jhellwig
Ethanol blending didn't start with the goal of suplimenting or replacing gasoline. It started when gas prices were very low and going lower. It was a replacement oxygenate and octane booster in place of MTBE.

As an aside, with respect to the original post, the company mentioned there (and whose pumps are pictured) used to, before our ethanol mandate, sell 89 octane ethanol blended fuel for the same price as E0 87 regular. The mandate made that little marketing strategy disappear.

Is your gas sub grade like it is in the US? Now 89 octane is made with premium in addition to ethanol blended in causing part of the price difference.

Originally in the US we had 89 e10 the same price as 87 e0. When the subsidies came around the 89 e10 became 10 cents cheaper than 87 e0 no mater what the price was. Then when subsidies went away and sub grade gasoline came the price differences went wild. 87 e0 is now made by blending premium with the sub grade gas. 89 e10 is premium and ethanol blended with sub grade.

Refiners had no reason to keep making 87 octane when they are paid to blend the mandated amount of ethanol required so they started making cheaper 84 octane gas that has to use ethanol to boost it to the minimum 87. Kind of a win win for them.

I guess there is one benefit to the e0 87gas you find now is that side it is made with premium it is a little better quality than what the straight 87 used to be. Some refiners premium gas is a better quality in addition to the increased octane than the regular gas.


I blended LOTS of conventional gasoline (around 1.5 to 2 million gallons per day) when I was a refinery blendineer in the early 90's, and the same ingredients went into conventional 87, 89, 91, 92, and 93 octane grades, just in different proportions. So how do you define increased quality convential 87 because it's ratio blended sub-grade and premium?

 

[jhellwig]

Originally Posted by Nyogtha
Originally Posted by jhellwig
Originally Posted by Nyogtha
It would typically be anhydrous 99% purity monimum before adding debaturant, which is typically natural gasoline (condensate, "drip", white lightning of the gasoline world) for ethanol destined for gasoline blending. However I'm unaware of snt ethanol tank, barge, railcar, truck trailer, etc. gas blanketing for ethanol used in gasoline nlending, same as for gasoline itself whether blended with ethanol or not.

There have been papets on using ethanol purified simply by distillayion used in gasoline blending, but they miss the main negative issues such as phase seperation from what I saw.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fieldt...ydrous-ethanol-in-gasoline-blending/amp/

The ethers used in gasoline blending are not anhydrous but aren't subject to phase seperation, such as MTBE, ETBE, & TAME.

It is more pure than 99%. I don't remember the numbers from when I worked on instrumentation in an ethanol plant but I think before the mol sieves it was over 95% and after was way higher than 99%. The final product proof meter I think only had a .3% span on it. It is stored in tanks with floating roof in plants and larger terminals so there is almost no air contact on it.

There is a spec out there on what percentage the denatureant has to be but I think it might be below 1%


Did you read the either my post or the linked paper in my prior post? Minimum 99% is just that, the minimum.

RIN's are a HUGE driver in ethanol blending, well eclipsing replacement for MTBE in air quality non-attainment areas. This is what drives some refiners to stop blending conventional 87 (R+M)/2 regular unleaded gasolime, and drives a LOT of the differential price between conventional 87 (R+M)/2 gasoline.

It's been 6 years since I retired and the RIN drivers only increase under the RFS. I live in the 7th largest city in the US and the only such major metropolitan area not yet declared an air quality non-attainment area. No vapor collection systems on retail gas pumos here yet. But E10 is everywhere, conventional regular unleaded gasoline is difficult to find and pricey relative to E10 regular due to RINs, not refinery blending capability.

I wasn't questioning what you said. Just saying that ethanol plant are producing it higher purity than that in practice.

Originally Posted by Nyogtha
Originally Posted by jhellwig
Originally Posted by Garak
Originally Posted by jhellwig
Ethanol blending didn't start with the goal of suplimenting or replacing gasoline. It started when gas prices were very low and going lower. It was a replacement oxygenate and octane booster in place of MTBE.

As an aside, with respect to the original post, the company mentioned there (and whose pumps are pictured) used to, before our ethanol mandate, sell 89 octane ethanol blended fuel for the same price as E0 87 regular. The mandate made that little marketing strategy disappear.

Is your gas sub grade like it is in the US? Now 89 octane is made with premium in addition to ethanol blended in causing part of the price difference.

Originally in the US we had 89 e10 the same price as 87 e0. When the subsidies came around the 89 e10 became 10 cents cheaper than 87 e0 no mater what the price was. Then when subsidies went away and sub grade gasoline came the price differences went wild. 87 e0 is now made by blending premium with the sub grade gas. 89 e10 is premium and ethanol blended with sub grade.

Refiners had no reason to keep making 87 octane when they are paid to blend the mandated amount of ethanol required so they started making cheaper 84 octane gas that has to use ethanol to boost it to the minimum 87. Kind of a win win for them.

I guess there is one benefit to the e0 87gas you find now is that side it is made with premium it is a little better quality than what the straight 87 used to be. Some refiners premium gas is a better quality in addition to the increased octane than the regular gas.


I blended LOTS of conventional gasoline (around 1.5 to 2 million gallons per day) when I was a refinery blendineer in the early 90's, and the same ingredients went into conventional 87, 89, 91, 92, and 93 octane grades, just in different proportions. So how do you define increased quality convential 87 because it's ratio blended sub-grade and premium?

Yes. Bp is one of those companies that is claiming a better quality of premium gas compaired to regular. It is hard to see their premium in sight glasses. It looks like nothing is in there. Regular BP gas has a tint to it.

 

[hatt]

Of course BP/everyone else is going to claim how wonderful premium is. They're trying to sell it. I'm sure the profit margin on premium is substantially higher than regular.

 

[Nyogtha]

jhellwig,

Color bodies have little to do with true gasoline performance quality. BP's marketing for water-white premium has more to do with a design flaw in their reformets than anything else. They use extremely hot reformer effluent to heat the reformer stabilizer, these gilm temperatures create an undesirable in gasoline polymeric material, so they require a reformate polymer removal tower no other such designs I know of have, downstream of the reformate stanilizer and upstream of the aromatics recpvery unit. The polymer stream is routed to diesel blending. Penny-wise on heat integration but pound foolish to require a sepetate large distillation column where all the useable reformate has to be vaporized and then condensed again with a polymer bottoms stream.

 

[jhellwig]

Originally Posted by Nyogtha
jhellwig,

Color bodies have little to do with true gasoline performance quality. BP's marketing for water-white premium has more to do with a design flaw in their reformets than anything else. They use extremely hot reformer effluent to heat the reformer stabilizer, these gilm temperatures create an undesirable in gasoline polymeric material, so they require a reformate polymer removal tower no other such designs I know of have, downstream of the reformate stanilizer and upstream of the aromatics recpvery unit. The polymer stream is routed to diesel blending. Penny-wise on heat integration but pound foolish to require a sepetate large distillation column where all the useable reformate has to be vaporized and then condensed again with a polymer bottoms stream.


Interesting to know.

The next time I am at one of our terminals I need to get a picture of an old promotional piece that Amacco made back in the day. It was a little glass block that had a bubble of ultimate in it and a bubble of regular. The operators say it is actual gasoline in it. The regular looks aged but the ultimate is crystal clear. It could be a gimmick but it is neat either way.

 

[Nyogtha]

Those reformers are Amoco design, acquired by BP when BP purchased Amoco; one is now owned by my former employer Marathon Petroleum at their Galveston Bay refinery.

The aromatic compounds have high octane but are the most photoreactive, which is,why anti-gum additive performance is based on "dark storage", typically 90 days. The olefin compounds are the most reactive with oxygen, and are the primary target of anti-gum compounds. The proportion of olefin componds in regular gasoline is thpically higher than in premium gasine due to the octane value of debutanized catalytically cracked gasoline being more suitable for regular gasoline in higher proportions.

The US military tests on gum formation in gasolines was performed years ago here in San Antonio, TX in a non-climate controlled shed. For the past 15 years or so refineries have large refrigerated storage facilities for retain samples of each batch of gasoline produced. I don't recall the minimum government specified retain period these days.

 

[Garak]

Now, I suspect it's all subgrade gas, except for premium. Back then, yes, it would have been E0 87 enhanced with ethanol to bring it to 89. Now, the 87 is E10 already. The only E0 commonly found now is 91 octane premium. 94 octane premium, where available, is generally enhanced with ethanol as well.

 

[anndel]

Hawaii repealed the ethanol mandate several years ago so there's no requirement here anymore. The refineries just choose to blend it. All the gas pumps used to have the E10 sticker but now it says "may contain up to 10% ethanol." Now some legislators with the tree huggers like sierra club and blue planet, the state was trying to pass a law that no gas or diesel powered vehicles will be allowed in hawaii by 2045 but that didn't pass out of committee.

 

[Shannow]

So what did Hawaii grow to make the ethanol, or was THAT an import too ?

Importing ethanol, or raw product to make it is ridiculous...shipping fuel should have the most energy dense option available.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted by Shannow
So what did Hawaii grow to make the ethanol, or was THAT an import too ?

Importing ethanol, or raw product to make it is ridiculous...shipping fuel should have the most energy dense option available.


Evidently you never lived or visited Hawaii. I was stationed there for two year in the military. There are a lot of sugar cane fields. Even on exercises in the bush, sometimes we would come across sugarcane and cut off a stalk with a machete and gnaw on a piece of it for the sugar.

 

[Nyogtha]

All the sugar mills except one had gone out of business in Hawaii when we visited in 2006. Kauai is mostly coffee now with no sugar cane, only a small part of Maui still raises and processes sugar cane. Part of the electric power supply in Kauai still comes from the prior sugar mill hydro station though. I don't recall noting any ethanol production facilities during our visit but that's not our primary vacation focus, rum distilleries and wineries hold no attraction for us. There's a historical education stop on the history of rise and fall of sugar cane processing in Hawaii now, just as there's a historical education stop on the history of storage and eventual thermal destruction of military chemical weapons on Johnson Island.

 

[Nyogtha]

Found these - no fuel ethanol production in Hawaii past or present, questionable for the future. Mandated state blending of ethanol on motor gasoline was repealed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Hawaii


There is a renewable diesel facility in Hawaii now, really small scale, and there are questions revolving around that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/...irst-to-be-certified-as-sustainable.html

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
Originally Posted by Shannow
So what did Hawaii grow to make the ethanol, or was THAT an import too ?

Importing ethanol, or raw product to make it is ridiculous...shipping fuel should have the most energy dense option available.


Evidently you never lived or visited Hawaii. I was stationed there for two year in the military. There are a lot of sugar cane fields. Even on exercises in the bush, sometimes we would come across sugarcane and cut off a stalk with a machete and gnaw on a piece of it for the sugar.


OK, we've established the veracity of your "facts" with the last few posts in the thread.

Like many of your "facts", and "evident" statements, water holding ability is zero...nice work.

 

[jakewells]

I have not burned E10 for two years now and why should i? There is only about 15 cents difference and i enjoy the benefits of NOT having to work on any fuel system.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted by Shannow
Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
Originally Posted by Shannow
So what did Hawaii grow to make the ethanol, or was THAT an import too ?

Importing ethanol, or raw product to make it is ridiculous...shipping fuel should have the most energy dense option available.


Evidently you never lived or visited Hawaii. I was stationed there for two year in the military. There are a lot of sugar cane fields. Even on exercises in the bush, sometimes we would come across sugarcane and cut off a stalk with a machete and gnaw on a piece of it for the sugar.


OK, we've established the veracity of your "facts" with the last few posts in the thread.

Like many of your "facts", and "evident" statements, water holding ability is zero...nice work.


What was that all about? I simply stated what they could have been using to make ethanol in Hawaii if they are indeed making it there. I have no clue if they are or not. I do know that sugarcane is everywhere there. 2 years in the 25th Infantry "Tropic Lightning" at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii stumping East Range and Kahuku up north and Pohakuloa on the Big Island. Sugarcane is big business in Hawaii. Ever hear of C&H Sugar? It is not a wild idea that if they are making ethanol in Hawaii, that sugarcane is the base product for it. Just like Brazil. They wouldn't have to import anything.

 

[edhackett]

Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
Sugarcane is big business in Hawaii. Ever hear of C&H Sugar? It is not a wild idea that if they are making ethanol in Hawaii, that sugarcane is the base product for it. Just like Brazil. They wouldn't have to import anything.

Commercial sugar production in Hawaii ended in 2016.
Quote
KAHULUI, Maui — Tens of thousands of abandoned acres of farmland lie fallow on this island, cemeteries of Hawaii's defunct plantation era, which met its end last year when the state's last remaining sugar grower shut down an operation that had run for 146 years.

Article

Ed

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted by edhackett
Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
Sugarcane is big business in Hawaii. Ever hear of C&H Sugar? It is not a wild idea that if they are making ethanol in Hawaii, that sugarcane is the base product for it. Just like Brazil. They wouldn't have to import anything.

Commercial sugar production in Hawaii ended in 2016.
Quote
KAHULUI, Maui — Tens of thousands of abandoned acres of farmland lie fallow on this island, cemeteries of Hawaii's defunct plantation era, which met its end last year when the state's last remaining sugar grower shut down an operation that had run for 146 years.

Article

Ed


Interesting. I really hadn't kept up with the sugarcane thing there. My time in Hawaii was in the mid 70's. Probably explains why ethanol is now not mandated in Hawaiian fuels anymore. That ethanol mandate for fuel was repealed in 2015 by the Hawaiian legislature. But it is still quite likely that the source product for ethanol production when Hawaii was blending fuels was sugarcane.

Speaking of that ethanol mandate repeal, it supports my contention that if one cannot get ethanol free fuel in their area, then complain to your state folks. States themselves can decide if they will allow ethanol free fuels to also be sold alongside ethanol blend fuels. The Fed mandate does not preclude ethanol free fuels also be available. That is a state decision.

 

[kschachn]

Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
Speaking of that ethanol mandate repeal, it supports my contention that if one cannot get ethanol free fuel in their area, then complain to your state folks. States themselves can decide if they will allow ethanol free fuels to also be sold alongside ethanol blend fuels. The Fed mandate does not preclude ethanol free fuels also be available. That is a state decision.

Except in those areas where the EPA has designated a non-attainment zone such as in southeastern Wisconsin. E0 is not available anywhere here including the marinas.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted by TiredTrucker
What was that all about?


LOL..look over there a bunny...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Hawaii